While Hollywood continues to produce campus football films (We Are Marshall [2006], The Blind Side [2009]), the rate of production is hardly on par with that of the Great Depression, when sports programmers such as Maker of Men (1931), College Coach (1933), and Pigskin Parade (1936) delighted moviegoers as they appalled critics. The Marx Brothers got into the act, capping Horse Feathers (1932) with comic confusion during The Big Game, and the Three Stooges followed suit with the two-reeler Three Little Pigskins (1934). RKO's Gridiron Flash (1934) adds a new twist to the formula, offering up an unlikely protagonist in Tommy "Cherub" Burke (Eddie Quillan), a prison parolee brought in as a ringer by Philadelphia's starchy Bedford College. Aware that Cherub's game plan is to use the college as a base for criminal activity, campus benefactor Grant Mitchell partners him with policeman's daughter Betty Furness in hopes that her wholesomeness will carry the ball. First-time director Glenn Tryon was a former vaudevillian once considered by Hal Roach as a replacement for Harold Lloyd. Tryon (who also scripted) shot fast and cheap and Gridiron Flash had its premiere less than two months after the start of principal photography. Tryon later made uncredited script contributions to the 1938 Marx Brother's comedy Room Service and was an associate producer for the Abbott and Costello vehicle Hold That Ghost (1941).

By Richard Harland Smith